1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of safety locking devices and is particularly concerned with a locking device for selectively preventing access to the valve handles of a conventional household water tap.
2. Prior Art
Every year, an increasingly large number of children suffer from relatively severe skin burns caused by hot water emanating from conventional household water taps such as the bathtub tap or the kitchen sink tap.
Indeed, children left unattended in a bathtub or adjacent a sink, even for a short period of time, will often have a propensity to play with the valve handles of the water taps.
Since the water temperature inside a conventional domestic hot water heater can reach values of up to 140 degrees Farenheight, if the hot water valve is accidentally opened, the water flowing out of the nozzle is susceptible of burning the tender skin of a child.
Furthermore, since an increasingly large segment of the population reaches an age at which Alzeimer's disease and other types of mentally impairing diseases become frequent, this increasingly large segment of the population also becomes susceptible of sustaining relatively severe skin burns as a result of inadvertently opening a domestic hot water valve.